Page 30 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
I would never be able to stop shuddering when I walked in that classroom and had to sit beneath literal corpses.
Emelle started to say something, but just as I leaned forward to try to hear her better, I felt a tug on my sleeve and looked down to find a toddler gaping up at me, his thick blonde curls as wild as mine.
“Mommy,” the toddler squeaked.
“Getoutof here, man,” Lander said.
The toddler popped back up into a young man with ginger hair and a sloppy grin. Winking at me, the Shifter turned on a heel and disappeared into the crowd, as if what he’d just done was a normal part of his Friday night.
“Okay,” I said, feeling faint now, “I think the Shape Shifting sector is officially the weirdest one.”
Lander laughed, the sound rich and—well, heartwarming. My memories of last year might have been foggy, but I could at least remember the way he’d once shied away from the idea of pure, undiluted joy. Now, with Emelle at his side, smiling up at him…
He looked so much more confident, more at ease in his own body, than I’d ever seen him.
At that moment, a Shifter struck up a catchy beat with his half-drum body, and Emelle tugged on Lander’s sleeve with a gasp.
“This is the same one they played the other day, remember, Land? C’mon, Rayna, come dance with us! This beat iseverything.”
She was already swaying her hips, drawing Lander’s eyes to her curves. I raised my palms, shaking my head.
“I think I’m going to get a drink first, actually.” If I was actually going to loosen up, I’d have to break the no-drinking rule I’d given myself. Surely, one night couldn’t make my head any worse than it already was. “You two go on without me. I’ll catch up in a bit.”
“You sure?” Emelle stopped swaying to narrow her focus on me.
“Positive.”
“Well, then,” Lander said, passing me the drink in his hand, “you can start with this one.”
Taking the cup, I only hesitated for a second longer before I knocked it back, draining what was left in one swift gulp. The burn slid down my throat and settled like a brewing fire in my stomach.
I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my dress. “Thanks. I’ll come find you both when the ceiling starts to spin a little.”
Fun. I could havefun. I could find pleasure for just one night.
Apparently satisfied that I meant it, Emelle dragged Lander into the fray of bodies, and I exhaled a long breath as the blissful heat of the drink started to spread through me like reaching roots.
Something tweaked in my chest, but I ignored it. Where was Rodhi? Wren and Gileon had decided to stay in and play board games tonight, but Rodhi had promised he was going to show up after he took care of some personal business. Whatever that meant.
“Rayna.”
I jumped and almost dropped my empty glass to find Wilder standing right behind me, his hands stuffed in his pocket.
“Wilder!” Maybe the drink was already rooting itself into my system, because I felt the words slip out more easily than I could have possibly expected. “I’ve been meaning to reach out to you to talk about the other day. I hope you know I didn’t mean it when I said we weren’t friends. It’s just that Kitterfol Lexington is—”
“I know who Kitterfol Lexington is,” Wilder interrupted with a half-smile. “He’s sort of the most famous alumni in my sector—and the most prying, I’ve learned since then. So I get it. I wouldn’t want him rooting around in my brain any more than necessary either.”
At the slight squint of Wilder’s eyes… he was curious, I realized, curious to know why Lexington had been cornering me in the first place. Scrambling for another topic so that my thoughts wouldn’t stray into dangerous territory, I asked, “So what are you doing in the Shifter house? I thought the Mind Manipulator parties were all the buzz.”
Although, come to think of it, maybe Steeler’s former position as the Manipulator prince had really put a damper on the whole sector—finding out their class royal had been a spy and traitor all along probably hadn’t been the greatest morale boost of all time. And I still couldn’t comprehend how much other people remembered of him. From the sounds of it, he’d been like a ghost waltzing along the periphery of everyone else’s memories. Nothing substantial to grasp onto.
Wilder jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the group of Shifters playing mini-pentaball.
“I met that middle guy—the one with the green ball—right before the Branding. He became a Shifter and invited me over.”
“Oh, cool. How was—”
“My first week?” Again, that half-smile seemed to weigh on his mouth. “Sorry, still getting used to the whole mind-reading thing.”
